


speak until the dust settles (in the same specific place)

by possibilist



Series: Fool's Gold Carmilla HSAU Deleted Scenes [1]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: AHHHH THIS IS FUN GUYS HAVE FUN WITH THIS YEAH, F/F, HSAU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-04 23:08:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3095975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilist/pseuds/possibilist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You nod and scoot closer, and she shuffles her books a little bit. Her handwriting is a little messy, a little hard to read, but really pretty—it fits her, you think—and she’s left-handed, so some of her notes are smudged a little bit, which is cute, you think. She explains things and it’s all kinds of complicated and seems, like, zero fun at all, except for when she’s talking gently, softly, moving her pen around and pointing things out, write a few things, smudging the heel of her hand with fresh black ink and grimacing, you’re just a little lost in her."</p><p>ANYWAY FRIENDS i am so lucky to be friends with olivia & bianca (whatsthedamage on here), & they gave me the bestpermission to fic a few deleted scenes from fool's gold, their hsau, for you guys. </p><p>so: five times laura just thinks carmilla is way beautiful. (there is their sleepover 3am convo here, have fun)</p>
            </blockquote>





	speak until the dust settles (in the same specific place)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whatsthedamage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatsthedamage/gifts).



> i would like to reiterate that this hsau isn't my creation & that i was given explicit permission to write this fic in their universe, & i'm so so happy i did.

**speak until the dust settles (in the same specific place)**

.

_i remember how cloth hung/ flexing with the forest clung/ half waist & high raised arms/ kicking at the slightest form/ i remember my first love/ i remember my first love  
—_james vincent mcmorrow, ‘cavalier’

//

 

1

 

If there was anything you were expecting about Carmilla, it was certainly not this—but, then again, your mom always told you that people will surprise you, and this is a good one, and you can’t help the huge smile you feel pulling across your face.

Because Carmilla is  _really pretty_ , and you’re kind of jealous, but she’s tough looking. Or, kind of; at least, she tries to look tough, with heavy boots and a  _lot_ of black, and before you knew her, you always assumed she was a completely damaged asshole.

But.

You’re in the teacher’s lounge during Saturday detention, which, really, you kind of deserved because you  _had_ cheated on a project. Flicking through the channels with Carmilla had actually ended in kind of an awesome way, because when you landed on  _America’s Next Top Model_ , neither of you had, shockingly on her end, had anything against it.

She’d moved around on the couch and ended up eventually putting her head in your lap for a bit, and you kind of  _love_ having a new friend, because her hair is very soft and she’d let you play with it for a while, before a strange smile—not the open, lopsided, small one she sometimes gave you that you just think is totally the greatest, because no one smiles at you like that, and you’ve never seen her smile at anyone like that either—when the  _best scene ever_ of  _ANTM_ comes on.

Carmilla fidgets with her hands and sits up, and her bangs fall into her face. She takes a deep breath and pushes them to the side a little bit, and you’re struck by the fact that she looks kind of very tired, but you know sometimes you can’t sleep, especially when you think of your mom a lot, so you don’t say anything.

Plus, her smile is still in place, and then she looks at you, just as you’re getting really  _excited_ for the scene, because it’s totally your favorite, and she says, “Watch this.”

You turn back to the television, because she’s really  _distracting_.

But then Carmilla, tough and quiet Carmilla, who you’re starting to think has the potential to be one of your favorite people, sits up very straight and matches Tyra’s voice  _perfectly_ : “ _Be quiet, Tiffany, be quiet! What is wrong with you? I have never in my life yelled at a girl like this. When my mother yells like this it’s because she loves me_.”

There’s her strange smile again, and it doesn’t pull at her eyes like you like, but she turns to you for a second and you giggle, because she’s  _really_ into this.

_“I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you! How dare you? Learn something from this. When you go to bed at night, you lay there and you take responsibility for yourself. Cause nobody’s gonna take responsibility for you.”_

She’s laced her fingers again, and she has such pretty hands. She’s taking deep breaths and you’re impressed because, really, this is a pretty good impression of Tyra.

“ _You rollin’ your eyes and you acting like this because you’ve heard it all before. You don’t know where the hell I come from, you have no idea what I’ve been through. But I’m not a victim, I grow from it, and I learn._ ” She looks at you again with a smile that’s a little more natural and you just really think she’s so much cooler than before you’d given her a chance.

“ _Take responsibility for yourself_ ,” she finishes, and you find yourself clapping, laughing a very delighted laugh, because that was  _awesome_.

Which you tell her: “Wow, that was  _awesome_.”

She rolls her eyes.

You put your hand on her knee because she’s bouncing it and  _apparently_  doesn’t want to admit how cool that was, and you say, “No, that was super awesome, Carm! Even I don’t know it that well.”

She laughs a little and says, “Yeah, well, one day I was sick from school and this whole stupid season was on, I found it funny.”

“It’s the best scene! A landmark in American television!”

“Sure.”

You squeeze her knee and pop up, because your chest is full with something so close to happiness, and you’re really glad for this detention, even if that’s silly.

You tug her by the hand up from the couch, and she groans exaggeratedly. 

“Are we going to go play seven minutes in heaven or something, cutie, because otherwise I don’t see the point in—”

Your face is flushed at this point, you’re entirely sure, and you say, “—I just want to walk around.”

She stands rooted in place with her arms crossed for a while but then she grumbles a “ _Fine_ ,” and follows you out the door.

You take out your phone while she’s messing with hers and shoot off a few texts.

**Laura (1:13 pm):** _hey mom :) i thought you’d like to know, i really do think carm is actually kinda sweet_

**Laura (1:13 pm):** _and funny too which is unexpected_

**Laura (1:13 pm):** _so you were totally right_

**Laura (1:14 pm):** _people are full of awesome surprises sometimes :)_

**Laura (1:14 pm):** _you’d like her_

**Laura (1:14 pm):** _Ilove you_

 

/

 

2

 

Mr. Samual always has the  _best_ stories, really, and you like his accent, because he can’t say his  _th’_ s clearly, and he makes his  _w_ ’s into  _v’_ s, and he’s also just nice. He grew up in a place called Olsztyn, and there are thirteen lakes there, you find out, and it’s north of Warsaw. He has some great stories of when he was younger and he swam in a frozen lake for two minutes on Christmas and then had a bonfire with his friends on the beach, even though it was snowing—apparently, you think, Polish people are, like, way tougher than anyone here—and he tells you that he met his wife dancing.

He’s also pretty awesome because sometimes he even brings you food his wife made: you kind of love mushroom and spinach perogies, even though they’re probably way healthier than what you normally eat. Lots of her pastries and cakes are also awesome, and those totally make sense.

So he’s kind of surprised when you tell him upon boarding the bus, “I’m going to sit with my friend today,” as a sort of apology.

He smiles and says, “That’s good.”

Obviously, though, it’s not that easy to sit with your friend, because Carmilla doesn’t even  _acknowledge_ you.

When you get off the bus that day, he gives you a little, seemingly knowing smile and says, “Good luck tomorrow, Laura.”

The next day, you notice Mr. Samual smile softly through the rear-view mirror when Carmilla throws you a, “Hey,” and then moves past you.

You think about that little smile and Carmilla’s huge reluctance to sit with you a lot that day, especially through Algebra, because you’re not really a huge fan of math, and also because, like, you know that after you take your math in school you really won’t have to use much of it as a journalist anyway.

You doodle Carmilla’s name a little in your notebook while Mrs. Glass is droning on about asymptotes and  _honestly_ , you can do all of this on your graphic calculator, so you don’t know why she’s taking so long.

But Carmilla really is a nice name.

Later that night, at home, you kind of wonder  _why_ Carmilla won’t sit with you, because really, it’s just a bus ride.

You wake up a little flustered the next morning, although you don’t remember your dream, but you think Carmilla was in it, which is kind of exciting because, despite her intense reluctance to sit next to you on the bus, she  _is_ your friend. Sometimes you have very strange dreams with LaF and Perry and Danny and even Kirsch, usually where you’re on a weird airplane or something, but they never leave you quite like you felt this morning. It’s not a bad feeling, though. And, also—it had Carmilla in it, so it can’t have been a  _bad_ dream.

The whole thing leaves you feeling kind of light and warm inside, so you just like really want to sit with her, and you don’t know  _why_ she won’t, because you know for a fact you smell really nice all the way up until after band, and you’re small, so you don’t spill into the seat next to you, and sitting in the back of the bus really can’t be all that comfortable because of the jolts over the speed bumps, but  _whatever_ , you’re going to get her to sit with you.

So you give up on most of your pride, and you sit by the back. Not  _in_ the back, though, and god, she looks extra pretty today, and you really think she wears t-shirts so well, even though you could never pull them off like that, and her hair is thrown into a messy topknot. She has a nice neck, with dark little hairs that look really soft fluttering a little bit out of her bun, and so, this neck is  _definitely_ one which you totally don’t want her to  _break_ falling if the bus lurches, so when she doesn’t sit next to you, you tug her down into the seat with a quick apology.

You rant a little bit to yourself during English II, mostly because you’re not a huge fan of the anti-semitism in  _The Merchant of Venice_ and at least Carmilla kind of being a useless jerk is better than that. You formulate a plan, though, by the time fifth period is over, and when you get home, you rush through your World History homework—really, there’s nothing particularly overwhelmingly thrilling about the Phoenicians—and get to work.

It’s your mom’s recipe, and it’s also kind of the only thing you can cook well, but you’re  _sure_ Carmilla  _must_ like gingerbread cookies, because how could anyone  _not_ like them? Or cookies in general, probably.

Your dad gets home from work late and asks, “Oh, why’d you make these?” around a mouthful of the head of one of the poor little guys. “Not that I’m complaining.”

You suddenly feel a little embarrassed, but you don’t really know why, because friends totally make their friends cookies and other nice things. “They’re for my friends,” you settle on.

He smiles—the same little  _smug_ smile Mr. Samual keeps giving you—and your dad consumes, like, the whole body of one of them before saying, “They’re lucky friends, Laura.”

Your chest aches for a moment, because his love has always been something that brings you back to earth, grounds you in something like roots that let you grow, and you’re thankful, because he’s goofy and annoying and overprotective and sometimes he embarrasses you, but you have never once doubted how gentle and kind he is, and you don’t really wonder why your mom fell in love with him, even though he burns food sometimes and actually  _owns_ bear spray.

“Thanks, Dad,” you say, and wrap him in a hug.

You text Carmilla the next morning and she actually responds in a timely manner, which is sort of surprising, but you figure she’s awake to get ready for school, and you’re not surprised she agrees to having cookies, because, well. They’re  _cookies_.

You give Mr. Samual a bag at your stop, before Carmilla’s, for he and his wife to share, and he thanks you with a little squeeze to your hand and a big smile. Sometimes you wonder why people don’t do nice things for other people more often, because it’s really great, and so you’re the kind of happy-sad you sometimes feel when Carmilla sits down next to you without hesitation.

She smells wonderful, like always, but she’s close to you this time, and you get a little distracted by the sort of smoke and cedar wood and something light, like oranges, before she says, “So, where are the promised treats?”

You roll your eyes and wish her a good morning and then wait a few moments before you hand her the cookies.

She teases you a little bit and eats a cookie  _really_ fast, and you’re proud because obviously she likes them, and then she says, “You know, if you wanted me to sit with you, all you had to do was ask.”

You’re a little embarrassed, and you feel the same warmth as you had after your dream with her run through your body, and she eats the cookies happily and quickly— _all_ of them, and yeah, you can definitely let her be your best friend.

She lets you talk about your English II homework, casually comments on the fact that, debatably, Shakespeare adapted  _The Merchant of Venice_ from a play called  _The Jew of Malta_ written before by a guy named Philip Marlowe, and then she goes on a weird explanation of Machiavellian figures, and—she could probably help you with your homework. She says it all kind of apathetically but you can tell she cares because she moves her hands a lot.

She walks you to class after you get off the bus, and hands you back the container.

“I hadn’t gotten to eat breakfast,” she says, “so thanks, Laura.”

You nod. “Yeah, of course.”

She smiles in a way that you really like even though it’s a little sad. You know because you sometimes have the same smile, and you wonder whom she’s lost.

But then she turns around with a quick, “At least you’re not shitty at baking.”

You laugh a little and doodle her name more in your German notebook. First period is boring anyway.

 

/

 

3

 

She’s in the middle of a rant about Liam— _so expected_ , you think, because she’s been pissed for the past three episodes—but you’re smiling, because even though she says, “ _God_ this show is so fucking  _trashy,_ cupcake,”about every five minutes, she’s obviously really into it, and thank goodness you have unlimited minutes on your phone and have a pretty easy time with your English II homework now that you looked up some of the stuff Carmilla had mentioned on  _Slaughterhouse Five_ —she really likes Vonnegut, apparently, and you’d picked the book for your next essay on a whim, so that worked out well—so you’re listening and doing some color-coded outlining at the same time.

“The worst thing,” she says, and her voice is kind of low and rough and distracting, and you get a little sidetracked from your outline.

“Yeah?”

“Is that penises are just— _ugh_.” 

You make a little choking sound in the back of your throat, because  _honestly_ , you’ve never ever really  _thought_ about what a penis looks like, let alone whether or not they’re— _ugh,_ or whatever, but at the moment they seem like it, which you chalk up to the fact that you like Karma and Amy better anyway.

“Carm,” you say, kind of chastising, “that’s  _not_ the point of all of this—or even really sexuality, because sex and gender aren’t the same thing  _at all_ , and—”

“Sweetheart,” she says with a sigh, “I know. But like, have you ever  _seen_ a penis? It's fine and great if people of any gender and sexuality or romantic orientation like them, but, I just—”

You’re suddenly so flustered you go pull open your window and sit on the seat, letting the cool evening breeze in. “That’s not—”

She laughs. “Of course you haven’t.”

“I just—”

“Let me tell you,” she says, “you really aren’t missing much.”

You have no idea how to really get control of this situation, because this is  _so_ not the point of  _Faking It_ , and you start to say, “ _Anyway_ , Carmilla, how far into the episode—” when you hear her shuffle around a little bit and let out a quiet, “ _Shit_ ,” before saying, very quickly, “Laura, hey, I have to go, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She hangs up before you can even say goodbye, and you worry you did something wrong, but you also really have to get this essay written, so you get everything finished but your conclusion—it’s not due until Friday, so you have two more days, it’s fine—by about 11, and then you send her a text, because she hasn’t even  _apologized_ for being, frankly, kind of rude.

**Laura (11:02 pm):** _Hey, is everything okay?_  


You fall asleep on accident reading your favorite Cophine fanfiction before she responds, but when you wake up at 6:30 the next morning like usual, you see a text.

**Carmilla (1:47 am):** _fine, i’m sorry_

You’re a little worried about her sleeping habits, but you kind of feel bad for being angry at her last night, so you text back.

**Laura (6:34 am):** _it’s totally okay_

**Laura (6:34 am):** _I was just checking in, don’t worry about it :)_

She doesn’t text back, and you get ready to a complete repeatedly loop of Shake It Off (really, Taylor Swift is an awesome way to start the day, obviously), but you don’t see her on the bus, and you know, because of Kirsch, that Will has two-a-days right now to start getting ready for Homecoming and playoffs that are coming up, so you don’t even get to ask him.

You don’t have Health today, because of an abbreviated schedule for an assembly—you play with the band section, so you can’t look for her either, even though you’re sure Carmilla probably finds ways out of them.

You try to concentrate on your notes, but you still miss a few of them.

 

/

 

4

 

You’re heading out to marching band practice later that day when you think you see Carmilla and Will under the bleachers, but you’re already running late—you’d forgotten, like, seven things in locker and had to go back two times—so you can’t go over to talk to either of them, but you’re glad to see her anyway.

She looks small compared to Will in his football pads, and he’s at least five inches taller than her already, and he tries to shove a tube of something—you guess—into her hand, but you have no idea what it is. 

Carmilla doesn’t take it, though, only shoves it back to him, says something snappy you’ve probably heard some variation of, you figure, because Will sighs and then she turns around and stalks off toward the Fine Arts building while he heads back to the football field.

You figure it’s probably just a regular sibling fight, which you kind of wish you experienced sometimes, although Carmilla would probably drive you absolutely  _nuts_ , but whatever. You're also glad she's not your sister for other reasons you can't really name, but anyway, you’re like,  _really_ late now, and so you hurry along and get into place  _just_  before Mr. Ranjbar arrives.

You’re kind of sweaty by the time you’re done—it’s still hot and you walk around  _a lot_ while you’re blowing into a flute, so it’s good exercise, and you hurry to get back to your locker and then to the library, because you need a book to finish your essay and someone had checked it out before, and when you walk in, still in running shorts and running shoes and your BAND ROCKS t-shirt—LaF had gotten it for you as a joke, and they still laughed whenever you wore it, because it had a rock playing a flute on it, which is just  _terrible_ , but it still makes you smile—and when you’re walking back to the Literature section, you’re not  _really_ surprised to see Carmilla sitting at a table, head bowed over a few very large, old books, headphones in, scribbling away in a notebook.

You’re kind of equally pissed off and happy, because she’s definitely been avoiding you—she’s ignored about seven texts and hadn’t met you for lunch, but whatever, she is your  _friend_ and you’ve always been generous with people, because you have sad days sometimes—and you walk over and tap her on the shoulder.

She jolts up and then winces for a second before letting out a breath and taking her headphones out.

“Jesus fucking  _Christ_ , buttercup, do you normally sneak up on people like that?”

You smile a little, because she’s flustered and it’s cute. “Sorry, sorry, I just—”

“Missed me?” she asks, raised eyebrow and an instant grin. She’s wearing a beanie today—it’s a little hot, but whatever, she can pull it off—and it pushes her bangs even further over her right eye, and just—

“You just look so pretty today,” you say, although it just kind of  _pops_ out, and she lets out an actual laugh and this is getting out of hand so you scramble to ask, “What are you listening to?” because you can  _definitely_ hear music still blaring from her headphones.

She moves kind of quickly, all of a sudden, to pause her Spotify, and she says, “Warpaint,” but you’re, like, totally sure you’d seen “Echelon (It’s My Way)” by Angel Haze as what  _was_ currently playing, which makes you laugh a little, but you just nod.

“Cool,” you say, because she’s blushing a bit and tucking her phone back into her pocket. But  _then_ she spots your t-shirt, and  _god_ , you’d  _not_ planned for this, and before you can even say anything, you say, “LaF got it for me, okay, as a joke, and th—LaF just, you know, has a weird sense of humor, but it’s kind of funny, and  _plus_ I was  _just_ at band practice, so—”

She grins. “It’s cute.”

_That’s_ unexpected, but you smile too. “Thanks.”

“You’re cute,” she says, tosses it out like it’s so easy to say, and your face gets even  _hotter_ than it was after marching around in the sun for two hours.

“Where were you today?” you ask as she’s rolling her eyes when you sit down caddy-corner from her, drop your backpack on the ground.

She shrugs. “I just didn’t want to go to that infernal assembly, so I told Mother I wasn’t feeling so hot and she let me skip out for the morning.”

You frown. “The assemblies aren’t  _that_ bad. I mean,  _we_ play.”

She scoffs. “Yet another reason to never attend one.”

“Hey,” you say, swatting at her arm playfully, and she flinches away a little bit but, “we’re really pretty good.”

“You tell yourself whatever you need to to get through the day, cupcake.”

You shake your head and you’re about to say something because she’s  _annoying_ sometimes but then you see a little smile tugging at her mouth and you worry your bottom lip to try not to meet it, which causes her to look down at her books again.

“Now that you’re here I’m not going to get any work done.”

You roll your eyes. “What were you doing anyway?”

She sits back with a resigned sigh. “Logic.”

You know she’s in Latin and Philosophy and Pre-Calc, but—“What class is that for?”

She looks a tiny bit embarrassed, you think, when she says, “It’s not really for class, I just, sometimes I like it.”

You look over at her books and her notes, and there are a lot of arrows everywhere. “You do  _that_  for fun?”

She puffs out a breath of air and starts to close a book, and you take her hand.

“I mean—it just looks hard? Sorta like math? Which, obviously, I don’t really like, and I know I won’t—”

She smiles a little and says, “It’s sorta like math and it’s kind of hard, but it’s nice. You can, you know, try to make sense of things, but not with psychology or anything, it's not about, like, your own specific life or anything. Just—it’s nice.”

The way she says it is so soft, and you really like the lilt of her low voice when she’s quiet and sincere, and you’re pretty sure she’s not sincere all that often. It makes you feel special. “Can you teach me?”

She says, “Probably not sufficiently—I’m just getting really into myself, but, you can see what I’m doing now, if you want, I guess?”

You nod and scoot closer, and she shuffles her books a little bit. Her handwriting is a little messy, a little hard to read, but really pretty—it fits her, you think—and she’s left-handed, so some of her notes are smudged a little bit, which is cute, you think. She explains things about Aristotle, some fifth and sixth century Indian logicians, something like, “If P then Q, P, therefore Q,” and then says that she’s been studying someone named Jan Łukasiewicz—you make a note to mention him to Mr. Samual—who wrote a lot about this history of logic, which apparently is helpful for her. It’s all kinds of complicated and seems, like,  _zero_  fun at all, except for when she’s talking gently, softly, moving her pen around and pointing things out, write a few things, smudging the heel of her hand with fresh black ink and grimacing, you’re just a little lost in her.

You kind of wonder how someone can be as beautiful as she is, because you’re pretty sure you aren’t, and that you’ve never met anyone like her.

The library is going to close soon, though, after a while, and she starts closing books and trying to fit as many as possible into her bag, which makes you laugh, because she has an adorable little furrow to her brow in concentration.     

You stand up quickly and she follows kind of slowly, then fumbles with one of the books she couldn’t fit in her bag with a small, quiet, “ _Fuck_.”

“Feeling like the elderly woman you actually are today, huh?”

She rolls her eyes and struts off in front of you. “You must be rubbing off on me.”

Heat shoots up your spine as you jog a little bit to catch up with her. “What?”

“If your friends influence you, and you’re clumsy, and you’re my friend, what would logic tell us here, cutie?”

You can’t help but grin—even though she made fun of you. “That you’re my friend,” you say.

She smiles a little and sighs. “I guess we’ll have to work more on this, because that’s actually a  _failure_ of a proof.”

You try to stand a little straighter and lower your voice. “You tell yourself whatever you need to to get through the day, cupcake.”

She looks at you in disbelief for a second and than laughs  _hard_ and says, “You’re such a moron.”

You grin.

 

/

 

5

 

She really  _does_ smell great, the same heady smoke and rich, wintery breaths. It’s even better now because you’ve been lying very close to her in your fort for the past two hours, and somewhere between showing her pretty much all of One Direction’s videos and the T Swizzle rap from 2009—“Are you  _kidding_ me, Laura, this rap is  _you_ ”—and by this point your hands are tangled with one another.

“Do you smoke cigarettes?” you ask her.

“Not really,” she says. “Why?”

You shrug. “You smell like them but only sort of.”

She laughs a little. “That’s probably my perfume.”

“Which perfume?”

“Well, I have to keep my air of mystery, don’t I?”

You roll your eyes, which does  _nothing_ , because it’s dark and you’re both on your backs.

“Have you ever had really long hair?”

“Are we playing 20 questions now?”

You smile and turn your head, and her profile is lovely, really, and this is  _totally_ the best sleepover ever. “If you want!”

She groans.

You jab at her side with your elbow with a laugh and she squirms away from you, so you squeeze her hand. “Come  _on_ , it’ll be  _fun_.”

“Fine.”

You pump your fist that’s not holding hers in the air. “Okay, so you answer that one.”

“Which one?”

“Have you ever had really long hair?”

“Define this.”

“As long as mine? Longer than yours is now?”

“Yeah,” she says, then shrugs. “When I was, like, six. It gets tangled all the time if it’s any longer than it is right now, though. Curls and everything.”

She does have  _great_ hair, and you like picturing six-year-old Carmilla, because she was probably the most adorable six-year-old on the planet, because she was probably small and quiet with big eyes and everything, really, so this is actually a decent answer and you nod. “Okay. You go.”

She waits a few moments before she asks, “Have you googled what penises look like yet?”

“ _Carm_ ,” you say. “ _No_.”

She laughs lightly. “Nice try, cutie. Go for it.”

Your palms are starting to sweat, but maybe hers are too so you try not to worry about it, because holding her hand is nice. “What’s your favorite food?”

“Crunch wraps, duh.”

You laugh, because that’s what you thought. “Mine is Nutella,” you say. “Like, in anything. Nutella cupcakes, Nutella on cookies, brownies with Nutella, Nutella croissants, Nutella—”

“—Off the spoon,” she says.

You smile. “Only if it’s really late.”

She sits up a little. “Do you have any here?”

“ _Of course_ ,” you say, sitting up too. “We  _always_ have Nutella.”

She laughs and before she can even ask, you dart out of the basement and up to the kitchen. It’s like, 2:04 in the morning, so you try to be really quiet when you go to the pantry and get your jar of Nutella and then grab two spoons from the drawer on the way back down.

She smiles when you climb back in, and dips her spoon first. She stares at you intently while you lick the Nutella off of your spoon, and, like, okay, her lips are great, and you  _had_ almost kissed her earlier, and you’re  _sure_ she would’ve been great practice, and that it would’ve felt really nice, and you kind of want to practice again,  _maybe_ , but then she seems to snap out of her staring at you and say, around a mouthful of Nutella, “It’s my turn, so—if you could go anywhere in the world  _with_ anyone in the world, where would you go and who would you go with?”

“Good one,” you say, and offer her the Nutella again. She’s had, like, three spoonfuls to your one, and she shakes her head and then tosses her spoon somewhere outside of the fort—you’ll have to locate that in the morning—and you close the jar and set it aside before lying back down beside her. 

You roll onto your side so that you can face her, but she stays on her back.

“Okay, so, I would go to Budapest, because it looks gorgeous and because my parents have a lock on the bridge there and I’ve always wanted to find it, because they went there on their honeymoon.”

She smiles a little bit and nods. “Yeah?”

“Mhm,” you say. “And I’d go with you.”

She closes her eyes and you’re not sure if that was the wrong answer—or  _why_ that would be the wrong answer, but your heart kind of aches when you look at her eyelashes, so long that they rest against her perfect cheekbones, and you’re sure they’re black even without her makeup. But then she opens her eyes with a sigh and says, “I’m sure Budapest is beautiful.”

You take her hand again and she tangles her fingers with yours quickly. “What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done?” you ask.

She takes exactly seven breaths before she answers, “I’m not very brave,” in the smallest voice.

“Oh, come on,” you say, because it’s late and because she sounded so sad. “I’m sure you’ve done something brave. Everyone does brave things once in a while.”

She waits exactly fifteen breaths this time before saying, “When I was little we drove through a very long tunnel once, and I don’t really like them, and I didn’t cry.”

You don’t even know what to say, so you just squeeze her hand.

She waits for a few minutes before asking, “Do you actually like band?”

You laugh, because it’s unexpected, and she smiles. “Yes, Carmilla, I actually like band.”

“Even with those uniforms?”

“Yes, even with our uniforms.” You glance at her, frown at the visible bump on her head from a combination of a falling banjo—which are heavy, and it might've been in a case or something too—and your trampoline safety net support poles. “You work at a music store, you should understand.”

“Not those uniforms,” she says, and you laugh.

“What was your favorite movie when you were little?” you ask.

“Matilda,” she says.

You hum with a smile. “I can see that.”

She stiffens for a moment.

“You know, the books thing. You’re always reading.”

It’s the right thing to say, you guess, because she turns toward you. “Yeah. Books are great.”

“Yeah.”

She looks at you very, very seriously and then asks, “What do you miss most about your mom?”

Your stomach swoops down and she scoots a little closer, and when you meet her eyes again they’re wide.

“I’m sor—”

“Her smell,” you say, because, really, that’s it. You shrug. “That’s what I remember most about her, so.”

She nods and scoots even closer, and for some reason your chest aches less. It’s a good sign about her as a person.

She sighs and closes her eyes. “What number are we at?”

“I don’t know. You’re better at math.”

She laughs a little breathy thing and doesn’t try to open her eyes. You watch her for a while—minutes, probably—because she’s small and beautiful and she has a silly spiderman bandaid on her head, before you ask, “Are you awake?”

“‘m now.”

You smile a little bit because she doesn’t move or open her eyes, just presses her face a little further into the pillow. “Are you scared about falling in love?”

“It’s 3 am,” she mumbles.

You nod and for some reason, put your arm gently on your side. She must be kind of hot in a hoodie and pants, but whatever, she looks comfy, and her bangs are falling into her eyes, so you reach out and brush them back. She smiles just the tiniest bit, so softly, and then she says, “Sometimes.”

“Yeah,” you say. “Me too.”

She sighs and says, “Sleep well, Laura.”

You close your eyes. “Sweet dreams, Carm.”


End file.
